


A Memory of Troubled Waters

by miss_nettles_wife



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Ambiguity, Future Fic, dark!marshall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 04:51:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15923255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Melaine has a visitor. (written for the Eerie Indiana Dreamwidth Arc Number Challenge Sept '17)





	A Memory of Troubled Waters

**Author's Note:**

> just an idea, inspired by a kotor fic I read 1000000 years ago that no longer appears to exist on the internet.

“I thought you were never coming back.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Mel lifted her glass of off-brand coke up to her lips and took a sip while maintaining eye contact with him. She had decided to work on her paper outside on the back veranda and sat next at the table under the open window to Ines’s room. Marshall looked ghostly as he stood in the darkness and rain, the only light on him were the purple runes trickling down the left side of his face.

“You already drove Janet out of town, do you think you can intimidate me too?”

“No.”

“Then why come here?”

“To see who had been left in charge of my daughter.”

A small, dangerous smile slipped along her lips. The buzzing sound Devon made when he felt something particularly strongly pushed up against her chest firmly. She set the glass down with measured precision, listening to the sound of ice cubes as they clinked against one another.

“You don’t have a daughter,” She said, voice soft. “I have a daughter. Devon has a daughter. Your much maligned wife, Janey Donner has a daughter. You do not have a daughter.”

Marshall gave her a look that was only to be described as wounded. She didn’t feel bad about it. If he wanted her to be kind to him, then he should have listened to Janet and Simon when they told him he was in over his head with the cultists that lived inside the well downtown.

“She is my daughter.” He said, defiant. Probably believed it to. Men like Marshall like to think they’re always right, God help the women who knew better.

“So it was you who smuggled her out of the hospital, then. You who held Janet’s hand and you who fed her when she cried at night, you who enrolled her in preschool and you who help her pick out her outfits? Funny, I thought that was us.” Fighting with him hardly seemed worth the effort. She was here. He was there.

“What am I, if not her father?”

Devon would have choice words for him, if he had a mouthpiece of his own. It’s not his fault, he was just soft hearted. Melanie might have had all the maternal instinct of a flooded riverbed, but she was doing okay. _She was._ Part of being a good mother meant not getting murdered right in front of your kid; that was sort of a no brainer.

Somewhere far away, lightning hit the ground. It lit up the sky in a brilliant tree of white and blue. It was a beautiful night. Marshall’s hair is plastered to his forehead, and his hand is resting on what one can only assume is a weapon of some kind. He looks like a drowned rat, but looks can deceive. He tricked Janet, Simon and Dash but he won’t trick her. Not now, or ever. If he’s here, he wants something. Probably Ines.

“A memory.”

“Mel-lainey?”

She finally broke eye contact with Marshall and looked into the window behind her. Ines’s forehead and eyes were just visible over the top of the window pane.

“Yes, honey?”

“The crying lady is in the tree again.”

A banshee that was brought here by whatever affliction Ines had would often sit in the tree outside and wail at all hours of the night. She found it unsettling, but Ines found it downright upsetting.

“Should I get rid of her?”

“Yes please.”

She turned her back on Marshall and went into the house, collecting a long iron pole she had made for this specific purpose. She made her way to the front of the house, and the sight of her sent the Banshee away. When she returned to put Ines back to bed, she glanced out the window. Marshall was gone.

She sat there for a while, watching Ines sleep.

 _Do you miss him?_ She asked Devon.

 _Can you miss someone who was never real?_ He replied.


End file.
